Chapter I · (continued 2)

And similar battles in the clouds are found in several other episodes of the Râmâyaṇam. The dart of Râmas falls upon the monster Kharas (the monster ass), as upon a great tree falls the thunderbolt hurled by Indras.[200] Heroes and monsters combat with stones and rocks from the great mountain, and fall, overthrown on the earth, like mountains. The monster Râvaṇas carries off Sîtâ with the magic of the wind and the tempest.[201] Heroes and monsters fight with trunks of trees from the great forest; moreover, the trunks themselves, having become monsters, join the fray, stretch out their strange arms, and devour the hero in their cavities. And here we come upon the interesting legend of Kabandhas, in which we find again the forests and trees combating, and the barrel of the Vedâs carried by the divine bull. The Dânavâs or demons also appear, in the Mahâbhâratam,[202] in the forms of sounding barrels. In the Râmâyaṇam, the highest of the demons (dânavottamah) is called by the name of Kabandhas (barrel and trunk), compared to a black thundering cloud, and represented as an enormous trunk, having one large yellowish eye, and an enormous devouring mouth in his chest.[203] In Tuscany, we say of water that gushes copiously out of a reservoir, that it pours as from a barrel's mouth. The monster Kabandhas draws towards himself, with his long arms, the two brothers Râmas and Lakshmaṇas (compared several times in the Râmâyaṇam[204] to the two Açvinâu, who resemble each other in everything). Râmas and Lakshmaṇas, i.e., the two Açvinâu, the morning and evening, the spring and autumn suns, the two twilights, who, in a passage of the Râmâyaṇam, are called the two ears of Râmas, cut off the two extremities, the two long arms, of the monster Kabandhas; upon which the trunk, able no longer to support itself, falls to the ground. The fallen monster then relates to the two brothers that he was once a beautiful demon; but that, by a malediction, Indras one day made his head and legs enter his body; his arms having been lacerated by the two brothers, the monster is disenchanted from this malediction, and having resumed his form of a splendid demon, he ascends to heaven in a luminous form. Here we have the all-radiant sun shut up in the cloud, he being the yellow eye, the burning mouth, of Kabandhas, and, in union with the cloud, forming a hideous monster; the hero comes to destroy his monstrous form, and the monster thanks him, for thus he becomes the glorious god, the splendid being, the handsome prince he was before. Râmas who delivers Kabandhas from his monstrous form by cutting off his two arms, is the sun Râmas coming forth from the gloomy forest, and uncovering the sky in the east and in the west. Râmas delivering Kabandhas is simply the sun delivering himself from the monster of gloom and cloud that envelops him. And, indeed, the greater part of the myths have their origin in the plurality of appellations given to the same phenomenon. Each appellation grows into a distinct personality, and the various personalities fight with each other. Hence the hero who delivers himself becomes the deliverer of the hero, viewed as a different person from the hero; the monstrous form which envelops the hero is often his own malediction; the hero who comes to kill this monstrous form is his benefactor.[205]

This theory of the monster who thanks the hero that kills him, agrees with what we find on several other occasions in the Râmâyaṇam, as in the case of the stag Marîćas,[206] which, after being killed by Râmas, re-ascends to heaven in a luminous form; of the sea-monster, which Hanumant destroys, and restores to its primitive form, that of a celestial nymph; of the old Çavarî, who, after having seen Râmas, sacrifices herself in the fire, and re-ascends young and beautiful to heaven (the usual Vedic young girl, the dawn whom, ugly during the night, Indras, by taking off her ugly skin, restores to beauty in the morning); an episodical variation of what afterwards happens to Sîtâ herself, who, having been ugly when in the power of the monster Râvaṇas, recovers her beauty by the sacrifice of fire, in order to prove her innocence to her husband Râmas, and shines again a young girl, like the young sun, adorned with burning gold, and wearing a red dress;[207] and when Râmas comes near (like the young dawn, when she sees her husband), she resembles the first light (Prabhâ), the wife of the sun.[208] This Sîtâ, daughter of Ǵanakas (the generator), whom the Tâittiriya Brâhmaṇam calls Savitar[209] or the sun, seems to me to be no other than the dawn, the daughter of light, the daughter of Indras, the god of the Vedic texts. These, indeed, sometimes represent Sûryâ, the daughter of the sun, as the lover of the moon (who is then masculine); but we find more frequently the loves of the dawn and the sun, of the beautiful heroine and the splendid solar hero, while the moon is generally the brother, or the pitying sister of the hero and the heroine, the beneficent old man, the foreseeing fairy, the good hostess, who aids them in their enterprises; although we also find the dawn as a sister of the sun and his succourer. In fact, the Buddhist tradition of the legend of Râmas, illustrated by Weber,[210] represents Sîtâ to us as the sister of the two brothers Râmas and Lakshmaṇas, who go into banishment for twelve years to escape the persecutions of their cruel step-mother (of whom the Kâikeyî of the Râmâyaṇam offers a confused image), in the same way as the Vedic dawn is united to the twin Açvinâu; and the same tradition makes Râmas, at the termination of his exile, end with marrying his own sister Sîtâ, as the sun marries the dawn. And the fact of Sîtâ being not born from the womb, but produced from the ground, a girl of heavenly beauty, destined to be the reward of valour,[211] not only does not exclude her relationship with the dawn, but confirms it; for we have seen the dawn rise from the mountain, as the daughter of light and the sun, whom the young sun wins for his bride, as a reward for his wonderful skill as an archer against the monsters of darkness; and we have seen that the dawn marries only her predestined husband, and her predestined husband is he who performs the greatest miracles, restores her lost gaiety, and most resembles her. We have just seen the old Çavarî and the ugly Sîtâ, at the sight of the sun Râmas, deliver themselves in the fire from every mortal danger, and become beautiful and happy once more.

But the concord between the mythical husband and wife is not more steadfast than that of mortal couples. Râmas is very apt to be suspicious. Having returned to his kingdom of Ayodhyâ, he allows himself to brood upon what his subjects may say of him for having taken back his wife, after she had been in the hands of the monster (they were not present at the first fire-sacrifice of Sîtâ); Râmas reveals his suspicions to Sîtâ, and blames the evil-speaking of the citizens for originating them; she submits a second time to the trial by fire, but, offended by his continual suspicions, she flees from her husband, and on a car of light, drawn by serpents (Pannagâs), goes down again underground (which appears to mean simply this—the dawn, or spring, marries the sun in the morning, or she stays all day, or all summer, in his kingdom, and in the evening, or in the autumn, goes down into the shades of night, or of winter).[212] It is an indiscretion of the husband which causes his wife to abandon him.

Thus, in the Ṛigvedas, we have seen Urvaçî, the first of the dawns, flee from the sun Purûravas. In Somadevas,[213] the king Purûravas loses his wife Urvaçî, because he has let it be known in heaven that she was with him; in Kâlidâsas's drama of Vikramorvaçî, the king Purûravas, having helped Indras in the fight, receives from him Urvaçî to wife, with whom he engages to stay till a child is born to them; the king, shortly after having espoused Urvaçî, looks at another nymph, Udakavatî (the watery). Urvaçî, offended, flees; she enters a wood to hide herself, and is transformed into a creeper. In the brâhmanic tradition of the Yaġurvedas, referred to at length by Professor Max Müller, in his "Oxford Essays," Purûravas loses sight of Urvaçî, because he has let himself be seen by her without his regal dress, or even naked.

We find yet another similar legend in the Mahâbhâratam.[214] The wise and splendid Çântanus goes to the chase on the banks of the Gañgâ, and there finds a beautiful nymph whom he becomes enamoured of. The nymph responds to his suit, and consents to remain with him, on condition that he will never say anything displeasing to her, whatever she may do or meditate; and the enamoured king assents to the grave condition. They live together happily, for the king yields to the nymph in everything; but in the course of time, eight sons are born to them; the nymph has already thrown seven into the river, and the king, although inwardly full of grief, dares not say anything to her; but when she is about to throw the last one in, the king implores her not to do it, and challenges her to say who she is. The nymph then confesses to him that she is the Gañgâ itself personified, and that the eight sons born to their loves are human personifications of the eight divine Vasavas, who, by being thrown into the Gañgâ, are liberated from the curse of the human form: the only Vasus who is pleased to remain among men is Dyâus (the sky), in the form of the eunuch Bhîshmas, whom Çântanus would not allow to be thrown into the waters. The same curse falls upon the Vasavas for having ravished the cow of abundance from the penitent Apavas. We shall find a legendary subject analogous to this one of Çântanus in several of the popular tales of Europe, with this difference that, in European tradition, it is generally the husband who abandons his indiscreet partner. The Hindoo tradition, however, also offers us an example of the husband who abandons his wife, in the wise Ǵaratkarus, who marries the sister of the king of the serpents, on condition that she never does anything to displease him.[215] One day the wise man sleeps; evening comes on; he ought to be awakened in order to say his evening prayers; if he does not say them, he does not do his duty, and she would do wrong did she not warn him. If she awaken him, he will be enraged. What is to be done? She takes the latter course. The wise man awakes, becomes enraged, and abandons her, after she had given him a son.[216]

The glowing aspect of the sky, morning and evening, suggested the idea, now of a splendid nuptial feast, now of a fire. In this fire, sometimes the witch who persecutes the hero and heroine is burnt, and sometimes the hero and heroine themselves are immolated. The sacrifice of Çavarî and of Sîtâ, who are delivered by the sun Râmas, is only a variation of that of Çunaḥçepas, liberated by the dawn in the Ṛigvedas. The story of Çunaḥçepas has already been made known by Professor Rodolph Roth,[217] and by Professor Max Müller,[218] who translated it from the Âitareya-brâhmaṇam; and I refer the reader to these translations, as well as to the English version which Professor Martin Haugh has given us of all the Âitareya. I shall, therefore, here give but a short account of it, with a few observations apropos to the subject in hand.

The king Hariçćandras has no sons; the god Varuṇas the coverer, the gloomy, the watery, the king of the waters,[219] obliges him to promise that he will sacrifice to him whatever is born to him. The king promises; a child is born, who is named the red (Rohitas). Varuṇas claims him; the father begs him to wait till the child has cut his teeth, then till his first teeth are cast, then till he is able to bear armour. It is evident that the father wishes to wait till his son be strong enough to defend himself against his persecutor, Varuṇas. Varuṇas thereupon claims him in a more resolute manner, and Hariçćandras informs the son himself that he must be given up in sacrifice. Rohitas takes his bow and flees into the woods, where he lives by the chase. This first part of the legend corresponds with those numerous European popular tales, in which, now the devil, now the aquatic monster, now the serpent, demands from a father the son who has just been born to him without his knowledge. The second part of the story of Çunaḥçepas shows us the hero in the forest; he has taken his bow with him, and hence, like Râmas in the Râmâyaṇam, who has scarcely entered the forest than he begins to hunt, Rohitas turns hunter, and hunts for the six years during which he remains in the forest. But his chase is unsuccessful; he wanders about in quest of some one to take his place as the victim of Varuṇas; at last he finds the brâhmaṇas Aġigartas, who consents to give his own second son, Çunaḥçepas, for a hundred cows. The first-born being particularly dear to the father, and the third being especially beloved by the mother, cannot be sacrificed; the second son, therefore, is ceded to Varuṇas, the gloomy god of night, who, like Yamas, binds all creatures with his cords. We have already observed how the middle son is the son of the celestial cow Aditis, the hidden sun, the sun during and covered by the darkness of night, or, in other words, bound by the fetters of Varuṇas—and it is his own father who binds him with those fetters. His sacrifice begins in the evening. During the night he appeals to all the gods. At last Indras, flattered by the praise heaped upon him, concedes to him a golden chariot, upon which, with praises to the Açvinâu, and help from the dawn, Çunaḥçepas, unbound from the fetters of Varuṇas, is delivered. These fetters of Varuṇas, which imprison the victim, bound and sacrificed by his own father, help us to understand the second part of the European popular tale of the son sacrificed against his will to the demon by his father; for Çunaḥçepas, towards the end of the European story, takes the form of a horse, Varuṇas that of a demon, and the fetters of Varuṇas are the bridle of the horse, which the imprudent father sells to the demon, together with his son in the shape of a horse;[220] the beautiful daughter of the demon (the white one, who, as usual, comes out of the black monster) delivers the young man transformed into a horse; as in the Vedic story of Çunaḥçepas, it is explicitly the dawn who is the young girl that delivers.[221] Varuṇas is called in the Râmâyaṇam the god who has in his hand a rope (pâçahastas); his dwelling is on Mount Astas, where the sun goes down, and which it is impossible to touch, because it burns, in an immense palace, the work of Viçvakarman, which has a hundred rooms, lakes with nymphs, and trees of gold.[222] Evidently, Varuṇas is here, not a different form, but a different name of the god Yamas, the pâçin, or furnished with rope, the constrictor par excellence; for we are to suppose the magic display of golden splendour in the evening heavens not so much the work of the sun itself, as produced by the gloomy god who sits on the mountain, who invests and surprises the solar hero, and drags him into his kingdom. As to Hariçćandras and Aġigartas, Rohitas and Çunaḥçepas, they appear, in my opinion, to be themselves different names for not only the same celestial phenomenon, but the same mythical personage. Hariçćandras is celebrated in the legends as a solar king; Rohitas, his son, the red one, is his alter ego, as well as his successor Çunaḥçepas. Hariçćandras, moreover, who promises to sacrifice his son to Varuṇas, seems to differ little, if at all, from Aġigartas, who sells his own son for the sacrifice. The Râmâyaṇam,[223] has given us a third name for the same unnatural father,[224] in Viçvâmitras, who asks his own sons to sacrifice themselves, instead of Çunaḥçepas, who is under his protection, and as they refuse to obey, he curses them.

The variation of the same legend which we find in the Harivanças[225] proves these identities, and adds a new and notable particular. The wife of Viçvâmitras designs, on account of her poverty, to barter her middle son for a hundred cows, and with that view already keeps him tied with a rope like a slave. The grandfather of Rohitas, Hariçćandras's father, Triçañkus, wanders through the woods, and delivers this son of Viçvâmitras, whose family he thenceforth protects and maintains. The deeds of Triçañkus, who begs of Vasishṭas to be allowed to ascend to heaven bodily, and who, by grace of Viçvâmitras, obtains instead the favour of remaining suspended in the air like a constellation, are also attributed to his son Hariçćandras; whence we may affirm, without much risk of contradiction, that as Triçañkus is another name for his son Hariçćandras, so Hariçćandras is another name for his son Rohitas, and that, therefore, the Triçañkus of the Harivaṅças is the same as the Rohitas of the Âitareya, with this difference, that Triçañkus buys the son destined to the sacrifice in order to free him, while Rohitas buys him to free himself. But the first hundred cows given by Triçañkus to Viçvâmitras do not suffice for him, and the fruits of his hunting in the forest are not enough to maintain the family, a circumstance which weighs upon him almost as much as if the family were his own; upon which, in order to save Viçvâmitras, in order to save Viçvâmitras's son, and, we can perhaps add, to save himself, he resolves to sacrifice, to kill the beautiful and dearly-prized wife of Vasishṭas (the very luminous). I have said the wife of Vasishṭas, but the Harivaṅças says, speaking strictly, it was the cow of Vasishṭas who was killed. But we know from the Râmâyaṇam[226] that this cow of Vasishṭas, this kâmadhuk or kâmadhenus, which yields at pleasure all that is wished for, this cow of abundance, is kept by Vasishṭas, under the name of Çabâlâ, as his own wife. Viçvâmitras is covetous of her; he demands her from Vasishṭas, and offers a hundred cows for her, the exact price which, in the Harivaṅças, he receives from Triçañkus for his own son. Vasishṭas answers that he will not give her for a hundred, nor for a thousand, nor even for a hundred thousand cows, for Çabâlâ is his gem, his riches, his all, his life.[227] Viçvâmitras carries her off; she returns to the feet of Vasishṭas, and bellows; her bellowing calls forth armies, who come out of her own body; the hundred sons of Viçvâmitras are burned to ashes by them. These armies which come out of the body of Vasishṭas's cow remind us again of the Vedic cow, from which come forth winged darts, or birds, by which the enemies are filled with terror. Vasishṭas is a form of Indras; his cow is here the rain-cloud. Viçvâmitras, who wishes to ravish the cow from Vasishṭas, often assumes monstrous forms in the Hindoo legends, and is almost always malignant, perverse, and revengeful. His hundred sons burned to cinders by Vasishṭas remind us, from one point of view, of the hundred cities of Çambaras destroyed by Indras, and the hundred perverse Dhṛitarâshtrides of the Mahâbhâratam; whence his name, Viçvâmitras, which may also mean the enemy of all (viçva-amitras), would agree well with his almost demoniacal character.

This story of the cow of Vasishṭas, whose relationship with the legend of Çunaḥçepas cannot be doubted, brings us back to the animal forms of heroes and heroines from which we started. In the story of Vasishṭas, the cow-cloud, the cow çabâlâ, or the spotted-cow, plays in the epic poem the part of the cow Aditis, the cow pṛiçnis (spotted, variegated), with which we are already familiar in the Vedic hymns. This cow is benignant towards the god, or the hero, or the wise Vasishṭas, as the pṛiçnis is to the god Indras. But we have seen in the Ṛigvedas itself the cloud as the enemy of the god, and represented as a female form of the monster, as his sister. This sister generally tries to seduce the god, promising to deliver into his hands the monster her brother, and she sometimes succeeds, as the witch Hidimbâ of the Mahâbhâratam, who gives up her brother, the monster Hidimbas, into the hands of the hero Bhîmas, who thereupon espouses her. On the other hand, Çûrpaṇakhâ, the sister of the monster Râvaṇas, does not succeed in her intent; making herself beautiful, she endeavours to win the affection of the hero Râmas; but being ridiculed by him and by Lakshmaṇas, she becomes deformed, and sends forth cries like a cloud in the rainy season,[228] exciting her brothers to annihilate Râmas.

The same cloud-monster is found again in the Râmâyaṇam, under the name of Dundubhis, in the form of a terrible buffalo with sharpened horns.[229] The buffalo, as a wild animal, is often chosen to represent the principle of evil, in the same way as the bull, increaser of the bovine herds, is selected as the image of good. This bellowing buffalo, whence his name of Dundubhis (drum), strikes and knocks with his two horns at the door of the cavern[230] of the son of Indras (Bâlin), the king of the monkeys. But Bâlin takes Dundubhis by the horns, throws him on the ground, and destroys him.

Dundus is also a name given to the father of Kṛishṇas, or the black one, who in the Ṛigvedas is still a demon, and only later becomes the god of cows and cowherds, a govindas, or pastor par excellence.[231] Indras, his enemy in the Vedas, having fallen from heaven, he became one of the most popular gods, and even sometimes the most popular form of the deity. In the Mahâbhâratam, for instance, he is almost the deus ex machina of the battles between the Pâṇḍavas and the Dhârtarâshṭrâs, and presents many analogies to the Zeus of the Iliad; whereas Indras plays only a part in the episodes, the rain-giver and thunderer being often forgotten for the black one who prepares and hurls the light. But the fall of Indras begins in the Vedâs themselves. In the Yaǵurvedas, Viçvarûpas, the son of Tvashṭar, whom Indras kills, appears as no less than the purohitas or high-priest of the gods, and son of a daughter of the Asurâs; he has three heads, of which one drinks the ambrosia, another the spirituous drink, while the third eats food. Indras cuts off Viçvarûpas's three heads, in revenge of the one which drinks his ambrosia; he is therefore charged with having killed a Brâhman, and decried as a brâhmanicide.[232] In the Âitareya-brâhmaṇam,[233] the criminality of Indras in this regard is confirmed, to which the Kâushîtaki-Upanishad also refers. In the seventh book of the Râmâyaṇam, even the multiform monster Râvaṇas is represented as a great penitent, whom Brâhman fills with supreme grace; in the sixth book, the son of the wind, Hanumant, cuts off the three heads of the Râvanide monster Triçiras (having three heads), as one day Indras cut off the three heads of the monster Vṛitras, son of Tvashṭar;[234] and he cuts all the three heads off together (samas), as the hero of the European popular tales must cut off, at a blow, the three heads of the serpent, the wizard, otherwise he is powerless, and able to do nothing. The monster, like the hero, seems to have a special affinity for the number three: hence the three heads of Triçiras, as also the three brothers of Lañkâ—Râvaṇas, the eldest brother, who reigns; Kumbhakarṇas, the middle brother, who sleeps; Vibhishaṇas, the third brother, whom the two others do not care about, but who alone is just and good, and who alone obtains the gift of immortality.[235] We have evidently here again the three Vedic brothers; the two eldest in demoniacal form, the youngest a friend of the divine hero, and who, by the victory of Râmas over the monster Râvaṇas, obtains the kingdom of Lañkâ. As to the brothers Râmas and Lakshmaṇas, and the brothers Bâlin and Sugrîvas, their natural place is in the story of the two twins, which will be referred to in the next chapter, although Hanumant, the son of the wind, figures second to them in the character of strong brother.

The three interesting heroic brothers come out more prominently in the Mahâbhâratam, where of the five Pâṇdavas brothers, three stay on one side, and are Yudhishṭhiras, son of the god Yamas, the wise brother; Bhîmas (the terrible), or Vṛikodâras (wolf's belly), son of Vâyus (the wind), the strong brother (another form of Hanumant, in company with whom he is also found in the Mahâbhâratam, on Mount Gandhamâdanas); and Argunas (the splendid), the son of Indras, the genial, dexterous, fortunate, victorious brother, he who wins the bride. The first brother gives the best advice; the second shows proof of greatest strength; the third brother wins, conquers the bride. They are precisely the three Vedic brothers Ṛibhavas, Ekatas, Dvîtas, and Tritas, in the same relationships to one another and with the same natures; only the legend is amplified.[236] As to their other brothers, twins, born of another mother, Nakulas and Sahadevas, they are the sons of the two Açvinâu, and feebly repeat in the Mahâbhâratam the exploits of the two celestial twins. Bhîmas or Vṛikodâras, the second brother, is considered the strongest, (balavatâṁ çreshthaḥ), because immediately after birth, i.e., scarcely has he come forth out of his mother (like the Vedic Marutas), than he breaks the rock upon which he falls, because he breaks his fetters as soon as he is bound with them (like Hanumant when he becomes the prisoner of Râvaṇas), because he carries his brothers during the night (as Hanumant carries Râmas), as he flees from the burning house prepared by the impious Duryodhanas (i.e., from the burning sky of evening), and because in the kingdom of serpents, where Duryodhanas threw him down (that is, the night), he drinks the water of strength. A serpent, wishing to benefit Bhîmas, says to Vasukis, king of the serpents—"Let there be given to him as much strength as he can drink from that cistern in which is placed the strength of a thousand serpents."[237] Bhîmas, at one draught, drinks the whole cisternful; and with similar expedition, he drains consecutively eight cisterns.[238] The first-born of the Pânḍavas is dear to his father Yamas, the god of justice, Dharmarâǵas,—and is himself indeed called Dharmarâǵas; and when he prepares himself to ascend into heaven, the god Yamas follows him in the form of a dog: by his skill in solving enigmas, he saves his brother Bhîmas from the king of the serpents. The third brother, Arǵunas, son of Indras, is the Benjamin of the Vedic supreme God. Indras welcomes him with festivals in heaven, whither Arǵunas had gone to find him. Arǵunas is an infallible archer, like Indras; like Indras, he several times regains the cows from the robbers or from the enemies; and, like Indras, he wins and conquers his bride; he is born by the assistance of all the celestials; he is invincible (aġayas); he is the best son (varaḥ putras);[239] he alone of the three brothers has compassion on his master Droṇas and delivers him from an aquatic monster.[240]

But there is yet another particular which shows the resemblance between the three brothers Pâṇḍavas and the three brothers of the Vedas; it is their dwelling, hidden in the palace of the king Virâṭa, in the fourth book of the Mahâbhâratam. They are exiled from the kingdom, like Râmas; they flee from the persecution of their enemies, now into the woods, now, as the Ṛibhavas, disguised as workmen in the palace of Virâṭas, to whom their presence brings every kind of happiness.

We meet with these three brothers again, episodically, in the three disciples of Dhâumyas, in the first book of the Mahâbhâratam.[241] The first disciple, Upamanyus, takes his master's cows out to pasture, and, out of sensitive regard for his master's interest, refuses to drink not only their milk, but even the foam from their mouths, and fasts till, like to perish of hunger, he bites a leaf of arkapatrâ (properly, leaf of the sun, the aristolochia indica), when he instantly becomes blind. He wanders about and falls into a well; he there sings a hymn to the Açvinâu, and they come immediately to deliver him. The second brother, Uddâlakas, places his body, as a dike, to arrest the course of the waters. The third brother is Vedas, he who sees, he who knows, whose disciple Utañkas is himself in the form of a hero. Utañkas, like the Vedic Tritas, and the Pâṇḍavas Arǵuṇas, is protected by Indras. He is sent by the wife of his master to abstract the earrings of the wife of King Pâushyas. He sets out; on his way he meets a gigantic bull, and a horseman, who bids him, if he would succeed, eat the excrement of the bull; he does so, rinsing his mouth afterwards. He then presents himself to King Pâushyas and informs him of his message; the king consigns the earrings to him, but cautions him to beware of Takshakas, the king of the serpents. Utañkas says that he is not afraid of him, and sets out with the earrings; but as he puts down the earrings upon the shore, in order to bathe, Takshakas presents himself in the shape of a naked mendicant, whips them up, and flees away with them. Utañkas follows him, but Takshakas resumes his serpent form, penetrates the ground, and descends under it; Utañkas attempts to follow the serpent, but does not succeed in cleaving the entrance, which corresponds to the Vedic rock under which the monster keeps his prey. Indras sees him tiring himself in vain, and sends his weapon, in order that it may be for a help to Utañkas; that weapon, or club, penetrating, opened the cavern.[242] This club, this weapon of Indras is evidently the thunderbolt.[243] Utañkas descends into the kingdom of the serpents, full of infinite wonders. Indras reappears at his side in the shape of a horse,[244] and obliges the king, Takshakas, to give back the earrings; having taken which, Utañkas mounts the horse, that he may be carried more swiftly to the wife of his master, from whom he learns that the horseman seen by him on the way was none other than Indras himself; his horse, Agnis, the god of fire; the bull, the steed of Indras, or the elephant Âiravatas; the excrement of the bull, the ambrosia, which made him immortal in the kingdom of the serpents. In another episode of the same (the first) book of the Mahâbhâratam,[245] we again find Indras busied in the search of the earrings, that is to say, of the excessively fleshy part hanging from the ears of Karṇas, the child of the sun, who, as soon as born, had been abandoned upon the waters. We have seen above how the two Açvinâu are also represented in the Râmâyaṇam as the two ears of Vishṇus Râmas (as the sun and moon are said to be his eyes); hence it seems to me that these mythical earrings, coveted by Indras, and protected by him, are nothing else than the two Açvinâu, the two luminous twilights (in connection with the sun and the moon), in which Indras, and, still more than he, the aurora, his wife, take such delight.[246] In the commentary of Buddhagoshas on the Buddhist Dhammapadam, we have the three brothers again; the two eldest are represented as fleeing from the persecution of their cruel step-mother; the third brother, Suriyas (Sûryas, the sun), goes to overtake them. The eldest counsels or commands, the second lends his aid, and the youngest fights. The second and third brothers fall into a fountain, under the power of a monster; the first-born saves them by his knowledge, as, in the Mahâbhâratam, Yudhishṭhiras, by his skill in solving riddles, delivers the second brother from the fetters of the forest of the monster serpent.

This mode of delivering the hero, by propounding a question or a riddle, is very common in the Hindoo legends. Even in the Pańćatantram,[247] a Brâhman who falls under the power of a forest monster who leaps on his shoulders, frees himself by asking why his feet are so soft. The monster confesses that it is because, on account of a vow, he cannot touch the earth with his feet. The Brâhman then betakes himself to a sacred pond; the monster wishes to take a bath, and the Brâhman throws him in; the monster orders him to stay there till he has bathed and said his orisons. The Brâhman profits by this opportunity to make his escape, knowing that the monster will not be able to overtake him, as he cannot put his feet to the ground. It is the usual vulnerability, weakness, or imperfection of the hero, or the monster, in the feet, and, if an animal is spoken of, in the tail.[248] The Mahâbhâratam has shown us the three Vedic brothers, of whom the youngest has fallen into the well; it also presents to us, in the witch (asurî) Çarmishṭhâ, daughter of Vṛishaparvan, king of the demons, and in the nymph Devayânî, daughter of Çukras, who credits herself with the virtue of Indras as the rain-giver,[249] the two rival sisters of the Vedas, the good and the evil. In the Râmâyaṇam,[250] the witch Çûrpanakhâ, who seduces Râmas, in order to take the place of Sîtâ at his side, is compared to Çarmishṭhâ, who seduced Nâhushas. In the Mahâbhâratam, Çarmishṭhâ assumes the guise of Devayânî, whom she throws into a well. Yayâtis, son of King Nâhushas, goes to the chase; feeling thirsty, he stops near the well; from the bottom of the well a young girl looks up, like a flame of fire.[251] The prince takes her by the right hand and draws her up; and because in the marriage ceremony, the bride is taken by the right hand,[252] the prince Yayâtis is said to marry Devayânî. But even after she is a wife, Çarmishṭhâ continues to seduce her husband, to whom she unites herself. Two sons are born of Devayânî, Yadus and Turvasas, similar to Indras and Vishṇus (a new form of the twins, of the Açvinâu); three are born of Çarmishṭhâ, Duhyus, Anus, and Pûrus; and here also the third brother is the most glorious and valiant. And in this way the episode is connected with the essential legend of the Mahâbhâratam, and one and the same general myth is multiplied into an infinity of particular legends. As the genealogy of the gods and heroes is infinite, so is there an infinite number of forms assumed by the same myth and of the names assumed by the same hero. Each day gave birth in the heavens to a new hero and a new monster, who exterminate each other, and afterwards revive in an aspect more or less glorious, according as their names were more or less fortunate.

It is for the same reason that the sons always recognise their fathers without having once seen them or even heard them spoken of; they recognise themselves in their fathers. Thus Çakuntalâ and Urvacî enable their mother to find again the husband that she has lost, and their father to recover his lost wife. Thus in the episode of Devayânî and Çarmishṭhâ, when the former wishes to know who is the father of the three sons of Çarmishṭhâ, so similar to the sons of immortals, she turns to them, and they tell her at once.

For this fault, Yayâtis, from being young, is fated to become old. He then beseeches the two eldest of the three sons that he had by Çarmishṭhâ to take on themselves the old age of their father; they refuse, but the third son, Pûrus, out of reverence for his father, consents to become old in his stead, to give up his youth to his father. After a thousand years, the king Yayâtis, satiated with life, restores to his son Pûrus his youth, and although he is the youngest, along with his youth, the kingdom, because he found him the only one of the three who respected the paternal will; and he expels the two eldest brothers.[253]

Sometimes, however, the blind old father is entirely abandoned by his sons. Thus the old Dîrghatamas (of the vast darkness), blind from birth, is deprived of food, and thrown into the water by his wife and sons,[254] but a heroic king saves him, in order, by his wife, to beget sons for him. We have in Dîrghatamas and Yayâtis, King Lear in embryo.

In the same legend of Dîrghatamas, we find an exchange of wives. Queen Sudeshnâ, instead of going herself, sends her servant-maid, her foster-sister, to be embraced by Dîrghatamas.[255] In the cunning Sudeshnâ we have an ancient variation of Queen Berta.

Other blind men occur frequently in the Hindoo legends. I shall here cite only Andhakas (the blind one) and Vṛishṇis (the sheep, as the lame one),[256] who appear in the Harivanças[257] as the two sons of Mâdrî. But we know from the Mahâbhâratam, that the two sons of Mâdrî are a human incarnation of the celestial twins, the Açvinâu; and here we come again upon the blind-lame one of the Vedas, the solar hero in his twin forms, the two Açvinâu protected by Indras, and companions of the dawn.

The Pańćatantram[258] represents the blind and the crooked, or hunchbacked,[259] in union with the three-breasted princess (i.e., the triple sister, the aurora in the evening, the aurora in the night, the aurora in the morning; the breast of the night nourishing the defective, the monstrous, which the morning sweeps away). The crooked guides the blind with a stick; they both marry the three-breasted princess. The blind recovers sight by the steam of the poison of a black serpent, cooked in milk (the darkness of night, or of winter, mixed with the clearness of day, or of the snow); he then, being a strongly-built man, takes the hunchback by the legs, and beats his hunch against the third and superfluous breast of the princess. The anterior prominence of the latter, and the posterior one of the former, enter into their respective bodies;[260] thus the blind, the crooked, and the three-breasted princess help and cure each other; the two Açvinâu and the aurora (or the spring) reappear together in beauty. The Açvinâu and the aurora also come forth together from the monstrous shades of night; the Açvinâu contend for the aurora; as we shall see soon, and in the next chapter, the delivered bride disputed for by the brothers.

The sun and the aurora flee from each other; this spectacle has been represented in different ways by the popular imagination; and one of the most familiar is certainly that of a beautiful young girl who, running more quickly than the prince, escapes from him. This incident, which is already described in the Ṛigvedas, occurs again in the Mahâbhâratam,[261] in the legend of the loves of the virgin Tapatî, daughter of the sun (the luminous and burning aurora, and also the summer season, ardent as Dahanâ), with the king Saṁvaraṇas, son of the bear (ṛikshaputras, a kind of Indras). The king Saṁvaraṇas arrives on horseback with his retinue at the mountain, in order to hunt; he ties his horse up and begins the chase, when he sees on the mountain the beautiful girl, the daughter of the sun, who, covered with ornaments, shines like the sun; he declares his love and wishes to make her his own; she answers not a word, but flees and disappears like the lightning in the clouds;[262] the king cannot overtake her, because his horse, while he was hunting, has died of hunger and thirst; he searches in vain through the forest, but not seeing her, he throws himself almost breathless to the ground. As he lies there the beautiful girl appears again, approaches and wakens him; he again speaks to her of love, and she answers that he must ask her father the sun, and then, still quite innocent, she disappears swiftly on high (ûrdhvam). The king again faints; his minister sprinkles him with the water of health, and makes him revive, but he refuses to leave the mountain, and having dismissed his hunting company, he awaits the arrival of the great purohitas Vasishṭhas, by whose mediation he demands from the sun his daughter Tapatî to wife; the sun consents, and Vasishṭhas reconducts to Saṁvaraṇas, for the third time, the beautiful girl as his legitimate wife. The husband and wife live together happily on the mountain of their loves; but as long as King Saṁvaraṇas remains with Tapatî upon this mountain, no rain falls upon the earth; wherefore the king, out of love for his subjects, returns to his palace, upon which Indras pours down the rain, and begins again to fructify the earth.[263]

We said a little ago that Vasishṭhas himself caused it to rain (abhyavarshata); and the mention of Vasishṭhas reminds us of the particularly rain-giving, cloudy, and lunar function of his cow Kâdmadhenus, whose wonderful productions are again described in the Mahâbhâratam.[264] Besides milk and ambrosia, she yields herbs and gems, which we have already referred to, as analogous products in mythology. The cow of Vasishṭhas is, besides her tail, celebrated for her breasts, her horns, and even her ears ending in a point; whence her name of çañkukarṇâ (the masculine form of which is generally applied to the ass). And in the Mahâbhâratam, also, the wise Viçvâmitras is covetous of this wonderful cow; the cow bellows and drops fire from her tail, and radiates from every part of her body armies which disperse those of the son of Gadhis. Viçvâmitras then avenges himself in other ways upon the sons of Vasishṭhas; having, e.g., become a cannibal, he eats them.

Vasishṭhas cannot endure the pain this causes him: he tries to throw himself down from the summit of Mount Merus, but he falls without hurting himself; he throws himself into the fire, but does not burn himself; and, finally, he leaps into the sea, but is not drowned. These three miracles are accomplished every day by the solar hero, who throws himself down from the mountain into the gloomy ocean of night, after having passed through the burning sky of evening.

Vasishṭhas ends by freeing, with the help of charmed water, the monster Viçvâmitras from his curse; and the latter is no sooner delivered from the demon who possessed him, than he begins again to illumine the forest with his splendour, as the sun illumines a twilight cloud. The friendships, enmities, and rivalries of Vasishṭhas and Viçvâmitras seem to be another version of those of the two Açvinâu, whom we shall particularly describe in the next chapter.

Meanwhile, it is high time, as the reader will think, to conclude this part of our study, which treats of the mythical cow of India. We might easily, indeed, have made it much larger, had our design been to chain together, link by link, all the traditions and legends in which the cow plays a primary or subordinate part. But it is better to stop short, lest, by expatiating further, we should lose sight of the essential aim of our work, and be tempted into digressions from the legends relating to beasts to those relating to men; besides, we think that we have sufficiently proved the thesis of this chapter, and shown how the principal mythical subjects of the Vedic hymns are not only preserved, but developed, in the posterior Hindoo traditions. It is not entirely our fault if, from cows, we pass so often to princesses, and from bulls to princes; the myth itself involves and indicates these transformations. Hence we find the bull Indras, the winner of the cows, become a winner and a seducer of women; we see the bull Wind, who aids Indras in the conquest of the cows, become the violator of a hundred damsels;[265] we read of the bull and god Rudras, as husband of Umâ, given up to sensual indulgence for a hundred years without a pause; that the son of the bull, or of the wind, Hanumant, does prodigies of valour and strength for the sake of a beautiful woman, and receives, as a reward for his zeal, from the king Bharatas, a hundred thousand cows, sixteen wives, and a hundred servant-maids.[266] What could Hanumant have done with so many wives and maids, if he were simply a bull? or what could he have done with so many cows, if he had been an ape? It is these inconsistencies which have caused mythology to be condemned by the crowd of old but prolific pedants, as a vain science; whereas, on the contrary, it is precisely these inconsistencies which raise it, in our esteem, to the rank of a valid science. He who handed down to us the feats of Hanumant, took care also to tell us how he had the faculty of changing his form at will; and this faculty, attributed to this impersonation of a celestial phenomenon, is the fruit of one of the most naïve but just observations of virgin and grandiose nature.

SECTION III.

The Bull and the Cow in Iranian and Turanian Tradition.

SUMMARY.

The bull the first created in Persian tradition.—The bull of Mithra.—Mithra and Yamas.—The excrements of the celestial cow and bull.—Exorcisms for chasing the evil one away from the beasts of the stable.—The salutary herb, rue.—The heavenly cypress and the mythical forest.—The mountain and the gem.—The mountain of the heroes.—The defenceless soul of the bull recommends itself to the mercy of the gods.—The moon, as a cow or bitch, guides the hero over the funereal bridge.—The many-eyed god.—The golden-hoofed bull.—The spinners of the sky.—Friendship between sun and moon.—The Geusurva is the full moon.—The purifying moon.—Ardhvî-Çûra-Anâhita, the Persian aurora, has all the characteristics of the Vedic aurora, elevated, luminous, discomfiter of the demons, deliverer of the hero Thraetaona from the water, having golden shoes, swift, the first to arrive with her chariot, guesser of riddles, revered at the break of day.—The aurora sung to by her own name, the cow-aurora.—Mithra, the shepherd-god,—Mithra, the hero who fights to recover his cows.—The bull Veretraghna.—Thrita and Thraetaona.—The three brothers in the Avesta.—The two brothers.—The three sisters.—The strength of the solar hero consists in the wind.—The winds have golden shoes and an especial foible for women, as the women have for them.—Indras envious of the Marutas.—Kereçâçpa envious of the wind.—The wind, with its whistling and wailing, makes everything tremble; the hero presses him tightly and forces him to be silent.—The bound hero.—The bow-cow, and the birds coming out of the cow in the Avesta.—The darts, horns of the cow.—The rich brother and the poor one.—The poor one, who has a lean ox and a lean horse, makes his fortune.—Ashis Vag̃uhi, another equivalent of the aurora who also frees the hero Thraetaona.—Other names of the three Persian brothers.—Importance of the Avesta on account of its mythical contents.—The hero exposed on the mountain.—The hero-shepherd, the wonderful child, Cyrus.—Feridun.—The three brothers, sons of Feridun; the third brother is the best, and is murdered by the two elder ones.—Sal, with white hair, the hero exposed and nourished by a bird, solves riddles, and receives in reward the daughter of the king.—The hero Rustem, with the mace of a bull's head, with the strong horse that vanquishes the lion, the strong hero, the Persian Orlando, kills and binds demons, monsters, and giants, who fight with rocks.—From black comes white.—The prince Kawus recovers his sight after the death of the monster.—The demon in the mountain, who keeps back the waters, is the same as the demon in the mill.—The hero Rustem unites himself with the daughter of the demoniacal and hostile king.—Sohrab is born of this union, with a demoniacal nature.—Gurdaferid, the Persian amazon princess, assailed in her white castle by the hero-demon Sohrab.—Rustem fights, wins, and kills his son Sohrab; he then retires from warfare.—Explanation of this myth.—The end of Rustem in an ambuscade.—Sijavush persecuted by his stepmother, whose love he had disdained; the young prince submits to the trial by fire, and comes out safely: the cruel stepmother was to have undergone the same trial, but Sijavush intercedes for her; she continues to persecute him; Sijavush dies in the country of his demoniacal father-in-law, and is avenged by Rustem, who kills the cruel stepmother.—The child-hero Kai Khosru consigned to the care of shepherds; during his childhood he performs prodigies of valour, and passes a river with dry feet.—The strength of the hair of the hero Firud.—The two hero-brothers again; one brother avenges the other.—The old hero becomes a penitent, and disappears in a tempest upon a mountain.—The seven heroic undertakings of Isfendiar.—The legend of Iskander.—The Tuti-Name.—The hero who wishes to kill himself for the king's sake; the deity prevents the sacrifice.—The story of the poor man and the rich one again.—The beautiful woman persecuted by her brother-in-law the seducer; the oriental Crescentia or Geneviève.—The sea, invited to the wedding, brings pearls and gold.—The maiden who discovers the thief by means of a riddle.—The girl who gives his eyesight back to the blind man against her will.—The lovers flee upon the bull's back.—The lover forsakes his mistress on the shore after having despoiled her.—The three brothers deliver the beautiful maiden and dispute for her; the maiden takes refuge in a convent.—The wise child who distinguishes false from true, honest from dishonest.—The money of the dead man.—The adulterer condemned to death who bites off the nose of his companion in guilt and dissoluteness.—The wife despoiled of her riches by her husband and thrown into the water.—Romeo and Juliet in the East.—The three brothers: the seer; the strong carrier, or Christophoros; the victorious one.—The disputed bride again.—The little pipkin of abundance; Perrette in the East.—The small porringer of abundance, which the two brothers contend for.—The shoes which take one in an instant wherever one wishes to go.—The little purse which is filled as fast as it is emptied.—The sword which makes a city rise.—The animals which contend for the division of the prey, and the third comer who profits between two disputers.—The four mines of the four brothers.—Why old men have white hair.—Calmuc and Mongol tradition.—The six companions are the same as three.—The bride torn in pieces.—A man unites himself with a cow, which brings forth a Minotaur of a good nature, who fights against the demons in favour of the gods.—The gem in the cow's litter.—The bull lost.—The three sisters; the third sister marries the monster bird; she loses him, because she has burned the aviary.—The painter and the woodman in Paradise; the painter is burned.—The two brothers, the rich one and the poor one; the rich brother ends badly.—The husband who despoils his wife and hides her in a chest in the sand of the desert.—The gem of the prince falls to the ground; his nose bleeds and he dies; explanation of this myth.—The wonderful hammer, which, when used, brings one whatever is wished for.—The rich and poor brothers; the poor one becomes rich.—The lengthened nose and the corresponding Italian proverb.—The wife kills her husband with the hammer, wishing to knock a protuberance off his nose.—The old man who eats his last cow; his wife continues, even after its death, to nourish and protect him until the wild beasts in the cavern devour him.—The woman disguised as a solar hero.—The lion and the bull friends, or foster-brothers; their friendship is put an end to by the fox.—The projects of Perrette again.—The horns of the dead buffalo.—The grateful animals.—The laughing princess.—The wise herd-children.—The wise puppets.—The prince born of a cake.—The boy learns in the forest every art, even devilish ones.—The son of the wolves who understands their language.—Heroes and demons cut in pieces multiply themselves.—The hero has good luck, because he has performed funeral services to the dead.—Four young shepherds, a new form of the Ṛibhavas, make a beautiful maiden of wood, and then dispute for her.—The wife throws her husband into the fountain out of jealousy, having heard another voice, perhaps the echo of her own.—The princess Light of the sun, who must be seen by no one, and who is visited by the minister Moon.—Turanian tradition in Siberia.—The three brothers dream upon the mountain; the third brother is persecuted on account of his dream; he finds the blind woman and lame man, and induces them to adopt him; he hunts, fights against the devil, and vanquishes him; from the body of the demon come forth animals, men, and treasures; he fishes up in the sea of milk the casket which contains the eyes of the blind woman; receives extraordinary gifts, and above all the faculty of transforming himself; wins his predestined bride, and kills his own cruel father.—The hero who solves enigmas.—Ancient and modern riddles.—The cow devours the wolf, and the wolf devours the cow.—The bow of horn.—The wolves fastened to the calf's tail.—The soul of the black bull in the rainbow, the bridge of souls, wounded by the young hero, who then espouses the daughter of the sky, after attaining the third heaven, and accomplishing heroic undertakings to merit her.—The sleeper in the cup, the gem in the fish.—The Argonauts and Medea in Turan.—The Finnish Diana.—The Finnish thundering God, Kave Ukko.—The little sun, the Finnish dwarf-hero.—The second of the three brothers.—The strong bear.—The monster giant darkness or cloud.—The Orpheus and the lyre of the Finns; grief the inspirer of song.—Finnish and Aryan myths.—The Sampo.—Esthonian tradition.—The three sisters; the third is the most beautiful, and is persecuted by her stepmother, and delivered by the prince.—The bird of light.—The maiden transformed into a pond-rose, and delivered by her husband in the shape of a shrimp.—The witch is burned in the form of a cat.—The gold of the witch.—Explanation of several myths.—The third brother is the swiftest.—The wise maiden.—The golden fairy.—The puppet.—The magical rod makes the cock come out of the mountain.—The fairy is good towards the good, and punishes the wicked.—The cow lost.—The old hospitable dwarf.—The leaf which carries the hero across the waters.—Heroic undertakings against the serpent and the tortoise.—The third brother, expelled from home, travels and solves riddles on the way.—The rod which makes a bridge.—In heaven and in hell time passes quickly.—The hero under-cook.—The golden birds and the voyages to hell.—The brothers punished, and the bride won by the magical sword.—The son of thunder.—The weapon carried off from the god of thunder.—The weapon recovered.—The fisherman-god.—The marvellous musical instrument; the magical flute.—The three dwarfs.—The hat that makes its owner invisible, made of men's nails; the shoes which carry one where-ever one wishes, and the stick which fights of itself.—The proverb of the third who profits between two disputers again.—The third brother is the son of a king, exposed when a child; he awakens the princess who sleeps in the glass mountain; non est mortua puella, sed dormit.—Passage from the dawn of the day to the dawn of the year.—The child sold by his father without the latter's knowledge.—The boy exchanged.—The boy sets out to deliver the maiden from the demon.—The pea, the kidney-bean, the cabbage, and the pumpkin of funerals accompany the solar hero in his nocturnal voyage.—The symbol of abundance, of generation, of stupidity.—The nuptial beans.—Meaning of the myth concerning vegetables.—The region of silence.—The region of noise.—The wise girl helps the hero.—The cow milked and the calf bound.—The luminous ball comes out of the calf.—The antithesis of white and of black.—Hungarian proverbs.—The luminous ball comes out of the stone.—The luminous ball and the ring.—The fearless hero frees the castle from spirits.—The Esthonian story of Blue Beard.—The charivari in the nuptials of widowers.—The widow who burns herself.—The hero exposed, and then brought up among cowherds, feels himself predestined to reign, and learns the art by guiding herds.—The German (or Western) witch endeavours to take the red strawberries from the Esthonian hero.—The boy avenges this injury by causing her to be devoured by wolves, who will not touch her heart.—The gardener's daughter.—The broken ring; the two parts of the ring unite again; the husband and wife find each other once more.—The maiden born of the egg in the shape of a puppet.—The casket which brings good luck disappears when the young couple are married.

Moving now from India westwards, we find on one side the Iranian, and on the other the Turanian traditions. We cannot pass into Europe without at least indicating the general character of each.

In the Persian cosmogony, the bull (gâus aevo dâto) is one of the first of created existences, being as old as the elements. It is, moreover, well known how much importance was ascribed to the bull among the Persians in the mysteries of the solar god Mithra, who is represented as a beautiful youth, holding the horns of a bull in his left hand, and having the knife of sacrifice in his right. Mithra sacrificing the bull is just the solar hero sacrificing himself in the evening. Indeed, in the Persian tradition, Mithra, like the Hindoo Yamas, holds the office of god of the dead, and as such, like Yamas, is of a monstrous aspect, and is found in the Yaçna represented with a thousand ears and ten thousand eyes.

As in India, so in Persia, the urine of the cow is used in ceremonies of purification, during which it is drunk.[267] We have already seen in the story of Utañkas how the excrement of the bull, upon which Utañkas fed, was ambrosia itself; and, indeed, all is beneficial which is given by the cow of abundance (the moon, the cloud, and the aurora), and by the divine bull (the moon and the sun). The mythical belief was natural, however disgusting when we insist on literal interpretation.

And even in the Persian tradition itself, a distinction already exists between common bulls or oxen and sacred or privileged ones. This distinction appears in the legend of Gemshid, whose bulls were all devoured by the devil, as long as they were protected by no magical rites; whilst, when he was given a red ox (or bull) cooked in old, that is strong, vinegar, to which was added garlic and rue (famous for its potency in exorcism), he disappeared and was never seen again.[268] The rue is probably the fabulous plant which the Zend tradition surmises to have sprung from the sea Vôuru-Kasha, whence Ahura Mazda draws the clouds, from which all healthful water is derived, and which corresponds to the sea of milk of Hindoo tradition, in which the ambrosia is agitated.

Thus the funereal cypress of Kishmar (planted by Zarathustra, with a branch from the tree of Paradise), under which more than two thousand cows and sheep could pasture, and the innumerable birds of which darkened the air, obscuring the light of the sun, reminds us of the celestial forest of the Vedâs, in which the shepherd-hero and the hunter-hero wander and are lost.

The idea of the funereal tree recalls to us that of the Persian mountain Arezûra or Demâvend, where the demons met together to plot evil, and where was the gate of hell.[269]

The Zend word açma, which signifies stone and heaven, yields us, in its double meaning, the key to the interpretation of the myth. This stone, inasmuch as it is dark, is of evil omen; inasmuch as it shines, it is a gem, or gives the gem (the moon or the sun); whence, according to the Minokhired, the sky is the progeny of a precious stone.[270]

Thus to the mountain of the demons (where the sun goes down), is opposed in Persian tradition the glorious mountain, out of which are born the heroes and the kings (or from which the sun rises and the moon); because Haoma is born there (the Hindoo Somas), the ambrosial, golden, and health-bringing god, who gives them the divine nourishment, and because the sacred bird, which stays on that mountain, feeds them with ambrosia, whence the Yaçna[271] invites Haoma to grow on the road of the birds.

In a rather obscure passage of the Gâthâ Ahunavaiti, confirmed by the Bundehesh, the soul of the bull (or of the cow, as the case may be), despoiled of his body by the evil one, complains to the Supreme Creator that he is without defence against the assaults of his enemies, and that he has no invincible protector. Ahura Mazda seems to wish only to give him spiritual help, but the bull continues to declare himself unsatisfied, until Zarathustra, the defender, accords it, and he receives the gift of efficacious favours which Ahura Mazda alone possesses.[272] Zarathustra is himself also born upon a mountain;[273] while his son Çaoshyańç, the deliverer, comes out of the waters.

A sacred cow, or at least a bitch which guards the cows (paçuvaiti), seems, besides a good fairy, to be, in the Vendiad itself,[274] the conductor of the souls across the bridge Ćinvat, created by Ahura Mazda, to the kingdom of the blessed. The cow, as the guide of the souls[275] lost in the kingdom of the dead, and placed upon the bridge, is probably the moon; the bitch (also the moon) reminds us of the Hindoo Saramâ, the bitch which aids the heroes who have lost themselves in the nocturnal forest, grotto, or darkness. In the same chapter, after accounts of the bridge, we read the praise of the good Çaoka, who has many eyes (like the brâhmanic Indras, disguised as a woman, having a thousand eyes, and, after the adventure of Ahalyâ, a thousand wombs—the god hidden in the night, who looks at the world through a thousand stars); after Çaoka, of the splendid Veretraghna (who corresponds to Vṛitrahan, properly the discomfiter of the all-covering darkness); and after him, of the luminous star Tistar, which seems a bull with golden hoofs,[276] which again must refer to the moon; as the Gâhs, who, according to Anquetil, "sont occupées à filer des robes pour les justes dans le ciel," like the cows and Madonnas in our popular tales, cannot be very different from the fairy, or at least from the stars which form her crown. The Khorda Avesta, in its hymns in praise of Mithra, celebrates the perfect friendship which reigns between the sun and the moon, and sings of the moon immediately after singing of the sun Mithra, and the splendid Tistar immediately after the moon, whose light is said to come from the constellation Tistrya.

We can thus divine the meaning of Geusurva (the soul of the bull or the cow), of which, besides the soul, the body also is invoked in the Yaçna.[277] The Geusurva appears in the Yaçna itself[278] as the protectress of the fourteenth day of the month, or of the full-moon, viewed as a full cow. And when it is said in the Khorda Avesta[279] that one must not sacrifice to the Geusurva at the time when the Daevas, or demons, are practising their evil-doings, it seems to me to indicate clearly enough that the sacrifice was to take place while the moon was increasing, and not while it was diminishing. Thus Asha Vahista, who reminds us of the Hindoo Vasishṭhas and his marvellous cow, has the power of conjuring away illness, north winds—in a word, evil of every kind—only when Ag̃ro-maiṇyus appears without help.[280]

We have seen in the legend of Utañkas how, as the youth is on his way to take the queen's earrings, he meets a bull, upon the excrement of which he feeds, as upon ambrosia; that this ambrosial bull stays near Indras, as Indras and Somas are invoked together; and we noticed that from this mythical belief was derived the superstitious Hindoo custom of purifying one's self by means of the excrement of a cow. The same custom passed into Persia; and the Khorda Avesta[281] has preserved the formula to be recited by the devotee, whilst he holds in his hands the urine of an ox or cow, preparatory to washing his face with it:—"Destroyed, destroyed be the demon Ahriman, whose actions and works are cursed. His actions and works do not come to us. May the thirty-three Amshaspands (the immortal saints, who correspond to the thirty-three Vedic devâs), and Ormazd, be victorious and pure!" It is said this remedial formula was used for the first time by Yima, when, from having touched Ahriman, in order to extricate from his body, by fraud, Takh mo Urupa, whom the demon had devoured, he had an eruption on his hand. Finally, it is interesting to learn that one of the Zend names of the moon is gaoćithra, which means he that contains the seed of the bull, since, according to the Bundehesh, the seed of the primitive bull passed into the moon, who, having purified it, used it to procreate other cattle (pôuru çaredho).

As to the aurora, there seems to be no doubt but that she was represented in ancient Persia by Ardvî Çûra Anâhita, the elevated, the strong, the innocent or pure, according to the interpretation of Professor Spiegel; she also drives a chariot drawn by four white horses, which she guides herself; she has a veil, a diadem, and bracelets of gold, beautiful earrings (the Vedic Açvinâu), a dress of beavers' skin, and prominent breasts; she is beautiful, and she is a good young girl who protects men and women. She is often invoked in the Khorda Avesta, like the Vedic aurora, to exorcise the demons, and to help the heroes who combat them; she herself has the strength of a thousand men, and is a marvellous heroine, like the Vedic amazon whom Indras fought with; her body is girt round with a girdle. The probability of this comparison seems to pass into certainty after reading a hymn of the Khorda Avesta,[282] even in the version of Professor Spiegel, who perhaps would have introduced some little variation if he had recognised the aurora in Ardvî Çûra Anâhita. In this hymn, the victorious and mighty Thraetaona, in the form of a bird, flies for three days and three nights, which reminds us of the fugitive Indras of the Ṛigvedas, who wades across the rivers after his victory; at the end of the third night he arrives near the aurora, and beseeches Ardvî Çûra Anâhita (that is, as it seems to us, the aurora herself, elevated, mighty, and innocent) to come and help him, that he may pass the waters and touch the ground at her habitation. Then Ardvî Çûra Anâhita appears in the shape of a beautiful, strong, and splendid girl, having a golden diadem and wearing shoes of gold (cfr. the Yast, xxi. 19) on her feet (this is perhaps another feeble foreshadow of Cinderella's slippers); the beautiful girl takes him by one arm (the bird has, it seems, become a hero), and gives him back health and strength. But the certainty increases still more when, as the Vedic aurora is the first of those who arrive, winning the race in her chariot, the so-called Ardhvî Çûra Anâhita appears in the Khorda Avesta as "the first who guides the chariot;"[283] and we are recommended to offer up sacrifices to her at break of day, before the sun rises.[284] We have seen the Vedic aurora and the sun propose and solve riddles; we have seen the Hindoo solar hero free himself from the monster by proposing or solving insoluble enigmas; in the same way, in the Avesta, the hero Yaçto Fryanananm asks Ardvî Çûra Anâhita to help him to solve ninety-nine enigmas, in order that he may free himself from the monster Akhtya.

Add to this that Ardvî Çûra Anâhita, like the Vedic aurora, is a giver of cows and horses, and that these animals are offered to her by her devotees. The aurora herself, in the invocation made to her in the sixth prayer of the Khorda Avesta, is also called "elevated," and furnished with swift and splendid horses.[285] The fact of finding the Anâhita drawn by four white horses, like the sun Mithra, enhances the evidence of this identity. And if the aurora is not explicitly represented in the Avesta as a cow, we infer that it was so conceived of, from the worship of Mithra, who was adored from the first streak of daylight till midday. Mithra often receives the epithet of "he who possesses vast pasture-lands;" the morning sun is therefore a pastoral god; and if so, we are constrained to think of the Persian aurora too as, if not a cow, at least a female cowherd. But Mithra is not a god of mere idyllic exploits, he is also a hero; the Vendidad[286] salutes him as "the most victorious of the victors." The booty of his victory [essentially due to his immediate predecessors Veretraghna (Vṛitrahan) and Çraosha][287] must have been the cows of the aurora, without which his immense pasture-lands would have been of no use to him. Indeed it is said that Mithra enables owners of herds to recover their lost oxen.[288]

But Mithra is not the only prominent hero of the Avesta. Besides him, the above-cited Veretraghna, with all his secondary and tertiary reflections, plays an important part in it. Now, this Veretraghna, who offers numerous analogies to the Vedic Indras, killer of Vṛitras, is, like Indras, now a hero, now a horse, now a bird, now a sheep, now a wild boar, and now a bull.[289] As the bull Indras assists Tritas, Trâitanas, and Kavya Ućanas[290] in the Ṛigvedas, so the bull Veretraghna in the Avesta, partaking of the nature of one Thrita[291] who is rich, splendid, and strong, and who, like Indras, cures maladies by the help of the guardian of the metals (the usual co-relation between the hero and the magic pearl), assists Thraetaona, the killer of the serpent Duhâka (Azhi Dahâka) and the hero Kava Uça, of which Kava Haoçrava is another name rather than another form. The Thrita and Thraetaona of the Zend are peculiarly interesting, because they remind us, though vaguely, of the Vedic myth of the three brothers. Only the Avesta names Thrita and Thraetaona as two distinct divine heroes; it attributes to Thraetaona the second place among the three brothers; and as in the Mahâbhâratam, it is the second brother, the strong Bhîmas, who falls into the waters, whilst the third brother, Arǵunas, delivers others from the marine monster by his valour, so in the Avesta it is Thraetaona who comes out of the waters, or who is the son of Athvya (-Âptya). But every one can see the point of contact, connection, or identification between the two hero-brothers. It is Bhîmas who comes out of the waters, and Arǵunas who extricates him, that is, who extricates his own strength, expressed in Bhîmas (the subject, and his virtue, become the object, being inclosed in one person). They are confounded together, inasmuch as Thraetaona, son of him who stays in the waters, or of the watery one, or he who comes out of the waters, and kills the demon, must be the same as Thrita, the third one, who has the virtue of curing demoniacal diseases. Thraetaona, the killer of the serpent, and Thrita, who destroys the evil-doing ones, are found again, with a different splendour, in the same heroic adventure. Scarcely an instant transpires between the time when the hero was a victim and that in which Veretraghna, or Thraetaona, or Thrita, the hero, triumphs in his own liberation.

In the Yaçna,[292] we find three men who, by their piety, win the favour of the god Haoma (Soma, the lunar god, the moon, the good magician, the good fairy). The first is Vivaghâo, the second Âthvya, and the third Thrita; from which we are led to conclude that Vivaghâo is the eldest brother, Âthvya the second, and Thrita the youngest. On account of their piety, they obtain sons; the son of Vivaghâo is Yima (the Vedic Yamas), the wise, the happy, the heavenly; the son of Âthvya is Thraetaona, the warrior who discomfits the monster; the third, Thrita, called the most useful, has two sons, Urvâksha and Kereçâçpa, who remind us of the Açvinâu. Âthvya's son and Thrita being confounded in one person, Thraetaona, or Thrita, forms a new triumvirate with Urvâksha and Kereçâçpa, as the Vedic Indras with the two Açvinâu. The story of the three brothers and that of the two brothers seem to be interwoven even in the myth, as they certainly are afterwards in the legend. To the three brothers, moreover, correspond, in the Avesta, the three sisters, the three daughters of Zarathustra and of Hvôvi: Freni, Thriti, and Pourućiçsta.[293] The first seems to correspond to Yamas, the second to Âptya and his son Thraetaona (or Thrita), the third, the luminous, the beautiful (as being the aurora), to the two handsome brother horsemen, Urvâksha and Kereçâçpa (the Açvinâu).

The solar hero comes out of his difficulties, and triumphs over his enemies, not only by force of arms, but by his innate strength and prowess. This extraordinary strength, by which he moves and is borne along, and which renders him irresistible, is the wind, invoked by the heroes in the Avesta under the name of Râman. The wind, according to the Avesta, is not only the swiftest of the swift, but the strongest of the strong (like the Marutas, Hanumant, or Bhîmas, Hindoo winds, or sons of the wind). Even in the Avesta, he fights and assures the heroes of victory, and is dear to woman and girls. (In the same way, Sîtâ has a leaning for Hanumant, and Hidimbâ, of all the Pâṇḍavas, gives the preference to Bhîmas.) Moreover, in the Avesta, girls invoke the wind in order to obtain a husband.[294]

A hymn of the Ṛigvedas, however, celebrates a kind of quarrel between the winds Marutas and the god Indras, prompted by rivalry; a quarrel which ends in Indras having the advantage. It is interesting to find in the Persian tradition[295] the same rivalry between the wind (vâta) and the son of Thrita, the hero Kereçâçpa. An evil genie informs the wind that Kereçâçpa boasts of being superior to him in strength. Thereupon the wind begins to howl and rage in such a terrifying manner that nothing can resist him, and the very trees are cleft in two or torn up, till Kereçâçpa comes and squeezes him so tightly in his arms that he is obliged to cease. This interesting mythical incident is a prefigurement of the loud whistle of the heroes and the monsters in fairy tales, which is brought to an end in a summary fashion, similar to that of the Persian legend; which also leads us to suppose that Thraetaona vanquished the serpent Dahâka, merely by tying him to the demoniacal mountain Demâvend.[296] This style of vanquishing the enemy by binding him occurs often enough in the Persian legends and in the Avesta itself;[297] and is also mentioned in the Hindoo traditions. The arrows of the monsters hurled against the heroes of the Râmâyaṇam bind them; the god Yamas and the god Varuṇas bind their victims; the first draws tight, tightens the reins (i.e., the evening sun shortens his rays); the second envelops, covers and binds with the darkness that which Yamas reined in. The solar ray which shortens itself, the shadow which advances, are images of the ensnarer of heroes; whereas the solar ray which lengthens itself, the thunderbolt which traverses all the heavens, surrounded by clouds and darkness, represents the hero who grasps around, presses tightly, and strangles the monster.

The bow of Mithra is formed of a thousand bows, prepared from the tough hide of a cow; these bows, in the Avesta, also hurl a thousand darts, which fly with winged vultures' feathers.[298] This carries us back again to the Vedic myth of the birds which come out of the cow.

The bow being considered a cow, this cow sharpens its horns; whence the Khorda Avesta celebrates the horned darts of the bow of Mithra, i.e., the horns of the cow, which have become weapons[299] or the thunderbolts.

The legend of the two brothers is connected more with the myth of the horse than with that of the cow or the ox. But inasmuch as it presents the two brothers to us as the one poor and the other rich, the riches are symbolised by the ox. However, if I am not mistaken, there are two heroes, celebrated in the Avesta one after the other (and whom I therefore suppose to be brothers), who derive their origin from this legend; one is called Çrîraokhsan (or who has a fine ox), the other Kereçaokhsan (or who has a lean ox). As the Avesta does not go on to develop this subject more in detail, I dare not insist upon it; nevertheless it is gratifying to me to remark that, of the two brothers, Kereçaokhsan was the most valiant, as of the two brothers Urvâksha (a word which may perhaps signify the one who has the fat horse, and which is perhaps synonymous with Urvâçpa[300]) and Kereçâçpa (he of the lean horse), it is the second who is the glorious hero; as in the Russian popular tales, we shall find the third brother, though thought to be an idiot, despised by the others, and riding the worst jade of the stable, yet becoming afterwards the most fortunate hero. Kereçâçpa avenges his brother Urvâksha against Hitâçpa, whom Professor Spiegel[301] interprets to mean the bound horse, but which can also be rendered he who keeps the horse bound, which would bring us back again to the story of the bridle and of the hero-horse, whom the demon keeps bound to himself, which we have already noticed above in the story of the sacrifice of Çunaḥçepas, delivered by the aurora.

It is uncertain whether we must recognise the aurora or the moon, in the Avesta, in the so-called Ashis Vag̃uhi, the elevated (like Ardvî Çûra Anâhita), who appears upon the high mountain, rich, beautiful, splendid, golden-eyed, beneficent, giver of cattle, posterity, and abundance, who discomfits the demons, guides chariots, and is invoked by the son of the watery one, Thraetaona, in the Ashi Yast,[302] in order that she may help him to vanquish the three-headed monster-serpent Dahâka. Now, Thraetaona, the victorious and rich in oxen,[303] being a well-known form of the solar hero Mithra, it is interesting to learn how the heroine, the so-called Ashis Vag̃uhi (the aurora, or the moon, as the three words Ardvî Çûra Anâhita are simple names of the aurora), having the same supreme god for her father, has three brothers, of whom the first is Çraosha, the pious; the second, Rashnus, the strong; and the third, Mithra, the victorious.

She is, moreover, herself represented as being pursued by enemies on horseback; and it is now a bull, now a sheep, now a child, anon a virgin who hides her from her pursuers. Not knowing where to go, whether to ascend into heaven, or creep along the earth, she applies to Ahura Mazda, who answers that she must neither ascend into heaven nor creep along the earth, but betake herself to the middle of a beautiful king's habitation.[304] How is it possible not to recognise in her the moon, or the aurora, who follows the path of the sun her husband, the moon, or the aurora, who appears on the summit of the high mountains?

Other facts not devoid of mythological interest might perhaps be found in the Avesta, which, on account of the uncertainty attending the translation of the original texts, has hitherto been, it seems to me, utterly neglected by mythologists. And yet, though Anquetil, Burnouf, Benfey, Spiegel, Haugh, Kossowicz, and all who have turned their talents and science to the interpretation of the Zendic texts, disagree in the more abstruse passages, there are many of which the interpretation is certain, in which the learned translators agree, which offer interesting mythological data, and permit us, in any case, to extract from the Avesta an embryo of mythology, in the same way as an embryo of grammar has already been extracted from it. The brief references which I have now made to the myth of the cow and the bull in the Avesta, anyhow appear to me sufficient to warrant the conclusion I draw, that the cow and the bull presented the same aspects, and generated the same myths and the same beliefs in Persia as in India, albeit in a form far more feeble and indeterminate.

The solar hero of Persia occurs again in the costume of historical legend in the Cyrus (Κυρος) of Herodotus and Ktesias, the first of which represents to us the child exposed by his parents, saved and educated during his infancy (like the Hindoo Karṇas, child of the sun, and Kṛishṇas) among the shepherds, where for some time he gives extraordinary proofs of his valour; the second shows us the young hero who wins his own bride, Amytis, daughter of Astyages.

Finally, the same hero appears in several splendid and glorious forms in the Shahname.

As in the Ṛigvedas, Tritas or Trâitanas, and in the Avesta, Thraetaona (of whom Thritas is a corresponding form), accomplish the great exploit of killing the monster, and more especially the serpent, so Feridun, the Persian synonym (by means of the intermediate form Phreduna) for the Zendic Thraetaona is, in subsequent Persian tradition, the most distinguished hero in the struggle against the monster. I shall not insist upon the deeds of Feridun and his mythical valour, after the learned paper written upon the subject by Professor R. Roth, which appears in the Transactions of the Oriental Society of Leipzig, and the able and highly-valued essay by Professor Michael Bréal on the myth of Hercules and Cacus. I shall therefore content myself with quoting from the legend of Feridun the episode of his old age, which reminds us of the Vedic myth of the three brothers.

The great king Feridun has three sons, Selm, Tûr, and Ireǵ (Selm, Tûr, and Er are also the sons of Thraetaona); he divides the world into three parts and gives the west to the first-born, and the north to the second, whilst he keeps Iran for the youngest. The two eldest are jealous, and announce to their father their intention of declaring war against him, unless he expels their younger brother Ireǵ from the palace. Feridun replies to their impious threat with haughty reproofs, and meanwhile warns the young Ireǵ of the danger he is in. The youth proposes to go in person to his brothers, and induce them to make peace; his father is unwilling to let him go, but finally consents, and gives him a letter for the two brothers, in which he commends him as his best-loved son to their care. Ireǵ arrives at his brothers' dwelling; their soldiers see him, and cannot take their eyes off him, as though they already recognised him for their lord. Then Selm, the eldest, advises Tûr, the second, the strong one, to kill Ireǵ; Tûr thereupon assaults the defenceless Ireǵ, and transfixes his breast with a dagger. Ireǵ is afterwards avenged by the son of his daughter (born after his death of a maid whom he had left pregnant), the hero Minućehr, who kills Selm and Tûr.

The hero who succeeds Minućehr is Sal, the son of Sam, whom, because born with white hair, his father had exposed upon Mount Alburs, where the bird Simurg nourished and saved him. Sal proves his wisdom before Minućehr by solving six astronomical riddles which King Minućehr proposes to him. The king, satisfied, orders him to be dressed in festive clothes; he then, to prove his strength, challenges him to run a tilt with the horsemen; Sal is victorious, and obtains another robe of honour and innumerable royal gifts; after which he espouses Rudabe, daughter of King Mihrab.

Sal distinguishes himself, like Minućehr, in his wars against the perverse Turanians, the dragons and the monsters, in which he takes along with him as his chief helper the mighty hero Rustem, whose weapon is a club surmounted with the head of a bull[305] or a horned mace (the hero is the bull, the thunderbolts are his horns), and whose horse is so powerful as by itself to fight and vanquish a lion while Rustem is asleep. The hero himself kills a dragon, and a witch transformed into a beautiful woman, but who resumes her monstrous shape as soon as the hero pronounces the name of a god. He thunders like a cloud, is dark, and describes himself as a thunder-cloud which hurls the thunderbolt.[306] He binds the warrior Aulad, and obliges him to reveal where the demons detain in prison King Kawus, who is become blind in their kingdom of darkness. Kawus then informs Rustem that to recover his sight his eyes must be anointed with three drops of blood from the slain demon Sefid; upon which Rustem sets out to kill the demon. The demons can be vanquished only by day; when it is light, they sleep, and then they can be conquered, says Aulad to Rustem; for this reason, Rustem does not begin the enterprise till the sun is in mid-heaven;[307] then he thunders and lightens at the demons. Like a sun, he sets out towards the mountain (no doubt, towards sunset), where the demon Sefid sits, and arrives at the mouth of a deep and gloomy cavern, from which Sefid sallies forth in the form of a black giant just awakened from his sleep. The giant himself, like an enormous mountain assaulting the earth, hurls a rock like a millstone at Rustem; Rustem strikes the monster on the feet, and lops away one of them; the lame giant continuing the fight, Rustem at last wrestles with him, lifts him into the air, then beats him several times furiously against the ground, and so takes his life. He throws the body of Sefid into the mountain cavern, whilst his blood saturates the earth, and gives back to the prince Kawus his eyesight and his splendour. The myth is a beautiful and an expressive one. As from the black venomous serpent comes white healthy milk, so from the black monster, at his death, comes blood, which gives back his eyesight to the blinded prince; the red aurora is here represented as the blood of the nocturnal monster, discomfited by the solar hero.

Let me ask the reader to notice the Persian comparison of the rock thrown by the demon to a millstone, as it is important to explain a superstition still extant in the West, to the effect that the devil goes under the millstone to carry out his evil designs. The stone or mountain fractured by the waters was naturally compared to a millstone moved by the waters; the demons inhabit the cavernous mountain to guard the waters; thus the devil, the evil one, the hobgoblins, prefer mills as their dwellings.

Rustem fights, in the Shahname, many other victoriously successful battles against Afrasiab the Turanian, and other demoniacal beings, in the service of sundry heroic kings, with epic incidents to boot, which are nearly all uniform. His struggle against his son Sohrab, however, is of an entirely different character.

Rustem goes to the chase. In the forest, Turkish bandits rob him of his invaluable horse while he sleeps; he then sets out, alone and sad, towards the city of Semengam, following the track left by his horse. When he appears, emerging from the wood, the king of Semengam and his courtiers note the phenomenon as though it were the sun coming out of the clouds of morning.[308] The king receives Rustem with great hospitality, and, as if to fill to the full the measure of his courtesy, he sends at night to the room where he sleeps his exceedingly beautiful daughter Tehmime. The hero and the beauty separate in the morning; but Rustem, before parting from Tehmime, leaves her a pearl of recognition. If a daughter is born to their loves, she is to wear it as an amulet in her hair; if a son, he is to wear it on his arm, and he will become an invincible hero. After nine months, Tehmime gives birth to Sohrab; at the age of one month he seems a year old, at three years of age he amuses himself with arms, at five he gives proof of a lion's courage, and at ten he vanquishes all his companions, and asks his mother to inform him of his father, threatening to kill her if she does not tell him. Scarcely does Sohrab learn that he is the son of Rustem, than he conceives the desire of becoming king of Iran and supplanting Kawus; he then commences his persecution of the Iranian heroes by assaulting the white castle (the white morning sky, the alba), defended by a beautiful warrior princess, Gurdaferid, dear to the Iranian warriors. Sohrab conquers and destroys the white castle, but in the moment of triumph, the warrior maiden disappears. The old hero Rustem then moves against his own son Sohrab; the latter throws him down, but Rustem, in his turn, mortally wounds Sohrab. In the old Rustem thrown down on the mountain it is not difficult to recognise the setting sun; in Sohrab mortally wounded by Rustem, the sun itself, which dies; and in fact, the dying sun has a different appearance from the new sun which rises and triumphs in the heavens: these two appearances might give rise to the idea of a struggle between the old and the young sun, in which both are sacrificed. Indeed, Rustem feels, when he mortally wounds Sohrab, that he is wounding himself; he curses his work and immediately sends for a healing balsam; but in the meantime Sohrab dies. The only one who could destroy the young sun was the old sun; the sun grows old and dies; Rustem alone could kill Sohrab. With the death of Sohrab the glory of Rustem is also eclipsed; he retires unto solitude, and the most grandiose period of his epic life comes to an end. After this he only reappears in episodic battles or enterprises; as, for instance, in his setting fire to Turan, in which he resembles Hanumant, burner of Lañkâ; in the liberation of the young hero Bishen, who had been taken prisoner and incarcerated by the Turanians; in the killing of the powerful and perverse Turanian Afrasiab; and in his own death in an ambuscade set by young rivals of the old lion, who dies taking vengeance on his enemies.

In the very palace of Kawus (he who was protected by Rustem), a notable legendary drama takes place. Sijavush, son of King Kawus, is seduced by the queen-mother Sudabe, who burns with love for him. The youth spurns this love, upon which she accuses him to King Kawus as her seducer. The father, after hearing his son's defence in proof of his innocence, cannot believe the queen; and thereupon she devises another method for destroying the young Sijavush. She concerts with a slave she has, who is a sorceress, and persuades her to create two little venomous monsters, which she straightway proclaims aloud are the children of Sijavush. Then Sijavush, to prove his innocence, submits willingly to the trial by fire; he enters the flames upon his black horse, after having embraced his trembling father; both horse and horseman come out of the immense fire, amid the plaudits of all the spectators. Then the king gives orders to strangle the unnatural queen; but his son Sijavush intercedes in her favour, and Sudabe is allowed to live by grace of the young prince, whom, however, she continues to persecute, till, on the death of Sijavush, Rustem, who bewailed him as his own son, or as his other self, avenges him first by killing Sudabe, on account of whom Sijavush had been obliged to repair to Turan, and afterwards by carrying the war into Turan, where, after a very agitated life, Sijavush had fallen into the power of his father-in-law, Afrasiab, and been put to death.

The wife of Sijavush, Ferengis by name, being pregnant, is hospitably entertained by Piran, and gives birth to the hero Kai Khosru; and no sooner is he born than he is consigned to the shepherds of the mountain. As early as seven years of age, his favourite amusement is that of drawing the bow; at ten, he confronts wild boars, bears, lions, and tigers with only his shepherd's staff. When Afrasiab sees the young shepherd, he inquires at him about his sheep and the peaceful pursuits of shepherds; the boy replies with stories of lions having sharp teeth, and of other wild animals, of which he is not afraid. As soon as he comes to manhood, he flees from Turan, followed by the Turanians; he arrives at the banks of a river, where the ferryman asks impossible conditions to take him over; upon which, like Feriḍun, he crosses the river safely, but without a boat, and on dry feet (it is the sun traversing the cloudy and gloomy ocean without wetting himself);[309] arrived at length in Iran, he is feasted and fêted as the future king. His reign begins; he then assigns different tasks to different heroes, among whom is his brother Firud, born of another mother, of whom it is said that a single hair of his head has more strength in it than many warriors (one ray of the sun is enough to break the darkness). One evening, however, at sunset, Firud is killed in his castle upon the mountain, being surrounded by a crowd of enemies, after having lost his horse, and after his mother Cerire had dreamt that a fire had consumed both mountain and castle. His mother Cerire (the evening aurora) throws herself among the flames with her maids, and dies also. Kai Khosru bewails the loss of his brother Firud all the night through, till the cock crows; when morning comes he thinks of avenging him.

After this, the life of Kai Khosru is consumed in battles fought by his heroes against the Turanians. Only towards the end of his days does he become a penitent king; he will no longer allow his subjects to fight, and his only occupation is prayer; he takes leave of his people and his daughters in peace, ascends a mountain, and disappears in a tempest, leaving no trace of himself. In a similar manner the heroes Yudhishṭhiras, Cyrus, and Romulus disappear (not to speak of the biblical Moses, still less of Christ, as we do not wish to complicate a comparison of which the materials are already so extensive, by mixing up the Aryan elements with those of Semitic origin; although the legends of the serpent, of Noah, of Abraham and his regained wife, of Abraham and his son Isaac, of Joseph and his brethren, of Joshua, of Job, and other and more recent biblical heroes, by their mythical or astronomical import, present numerous analogies with the Indo-European legends); in a similar manner, the old sun, weary of reigning in the heavens and fighting for his life, becomes invisible every evening on the mountain-peaks.